Different types of moveable barrier operators have been sold over the years and these barrier operator systems have been used to actuate various types of moveable barriers. For example, garage door operators have been used to move garage doors and gate operators have been used to open and close gates.
Such barrier movement operators may include various mechanisms to open and close the barrier. For instance, a wall control unit may be coupled to the barrier movement operator and send signals to a head unit thereby causing the head unit to open and close the barrier. In addition, operators often include a receiver unit at the head unit to receive wireless transmissions from a hand-held code transmitter or from a keypad transmitter, which may be affixed to the outside of the area closed by the barrier or other structure.
Light sources have been used with previous moveable barrier operator systems. For example, light bulbs have been used with garage door operators so that users may be provided with general illumination of their garage. In addition, these light sources sometimes helped to enhance the security of an area, for example, allowing a user to see if there was an intruder present in the illuminated area.
The light sources of these previous systems were typically mounted outside of the moveable barrier operator. More specifically, these light sources were generally mounted in a front-to-back or side-to-side locations to provide general lighting of the area of the garage. While these light sources sometimes give generally good overall lighting of the garage, they could not be directed to illuminate specific areas. Consequently, these systems were inefficient to use because areas of no interest might be illuminated while areas of high interest might not be sufficiently illuminated. Some other previous systems have used partial reflectors, which could be repositioned through hands-on physical manipulation by an end user to alter the pattern of light emitted from a light source. Although the use of these reflectors allowed for some modification to the light patterns produced, the use of reflectors increased the cost of the system and, in any event, the reflectors could not redirect light so as to illuminate precise areas that changed over time.